Christopher Schlegel

Understanding Music Notation Lesson 11 – Rhythm Subdivisions

We can further subdivide rhythms by placing a little point to the immediate right of any note. Doing this actually means to increase the rhythm value by 50 percent. So, for example, a quarter note normally lasts for one count. But a “dotted” quarter note lasts for one count plus another 50 percent of one count:

1 + (1 x .50) = 1 + .5 = 1.5 or “one and a half”

Essentially, a dotted note lasts one and a half time as long as without the dot.

With this in mind, let’s practice the idea by slightly altering our previous Beethoven example melody.